Magic
by Heslen
Summary: Kit faces surprises, disappearances and comparisons. One-shot. Written for the Prompt Exchange Challenge : July. Prompt: "Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." -Roald Dahl. I don't own Virals. Thanks to ImpalaLove and Unattainable Dreams for the prompt and the challenge, respectively.


**So I have a July prompt to write for, and here it is. "Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl, sent by ImpalaLove. I don't own Virals. Enjoy the story :D**

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Kit contemplated his daughter's retreating figure as she tore across the sand, her wolf dog scrambling around her heels. He was just turning away to go home when he saw it. Tory was maybe two hundred meters away, still in plain view in the clearness of the day. Suddenly, she was gone. Kit blinked and peered after her, disbelieving that someone could vanish so quickly. He thought maybe she'd fallen and was lying out of sight, but the wolf dog sprinted out of sight. He wouldn't abandon his fallen mistress, Kit was certain of it. Sure enough, as he puffed up the gentle slope of a sand dune, empty sands stretched out, forming a perimeter around his island, but no Tory lay fallen on the beach. Kit slowly bent and sat heavily on the sand dune, thinking hard. Rushing waves mimicked the pattern of his thoughts, crashing hard on the sand and then pulling away, lost in the constant swirl of the ocean.

Kit had always loved the water.

The sea, specifically, of course, but water in general. It fascinated him, as a scientist, that something so common could be so precious, that something so simple could be so complex in nature, that something so basically essential that with a single oxygen atom could be into a deadly toxin. In one way it was like Tory - always there, somewhere, always moving and changing yet remaining the same. Full of life - from microscopic organisms to cities of coral to enormous whales.

Not that Tory was full of whales.

But she was full of other things, the most predominant one being surprises. Take this afternoon. She had been running, perfectly normally. Then she'd just _disappeared. _Just like that. Kit stood, knocking sand off his legs and backside to go back home. He could use a cup of coffee, or a nap. Or maybe just some time to ponder his daughter, to mull over her surprise appearance in his life - so long after Colleen had left it - and every surprise that followed. Some had been full of joy. Others were more quiet wonder.

Some had been full of gut-wrenching, hair-wrenching terror.

It was like lollies - a mixed bag, but generally worth the price you paid.

God, Kit wished his English teacher had never ever brought up metaphors or comparisons - not that he minded them. They made books that little bit more interesting, drew him out of sleep during a speech, and sometimes made him laugh. But his life was full of comparisons and sometimes he just wanted them to _stop, _as though they were songs stuck in his head that he couldn't leave behind him.

Yep, there was another one. Kit could manage the small ones, the everyday ones, but sometimes they turned over stones in his mind that he didn't quite want to flip just yet. Or maybe ever.

For example, comparing Whitney and Colleen.

That was painful, and awkward, and made his life just that little bit more complex. Which he didn't need AT ALL. Especially with Tory's confusing, surprising, weird habits.

Like spontaneously disappearing.

It wasn't possible. He should have been able to see her for at least another four seconds before she rounded the corner and vanished. (He had done physics in university, hadn't he?). But no, she'd gone. And that wasn't it, either. That whole Gamemaster thing. He'd seen the metal grating that four teenagers - two of them scrawny and one of them unfit - had single-handedly lifted, after the single outsider witness and been knocked unconscious. And... he could name other things, unexplained events that occurred around Tory and her friends. Kit smiled to himself as he turned away to go back home.

It couldn't be. It wouldn't be scientifically possible, and Kit was many things, not least of which was a scientist.

It was not possible. But, if he was honest with himself...

It was like magic.


End file.
